


December in New York

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Santa Clause (Movies)
Genre: Awkward courtships, F/M, adult!Lucy, jack has no social skills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-21 19:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: Lucy has grown up and left her memories of the North Pole behind. But one day a reminder shows up on her doorstep, a man who insists they've met before and wants to spend time with her.  Is there something genuine behind his offputting behavior? Or is he simply playing nice to get on her good side?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I'm not going to pretend his behavior in SC3 wasn't really...implication-y and weird, but I like the idea of them getting together when Lucy is older and having absolutely none of his bullshit.

Lucy Miller gave a last little nudge to her shelf of snow globes (that sat next to the bookcase of snow globes, which stood guarding the curio cabinet of snow globes and the end table that held several snow globes that didn’t fit anywhere else) adjusted her plum-colored  knit cap, and locked the apartment door behind her. It was December, which was her favorite month in New York. Not just because the heaps of snow hid the heaps of less pleasant things that usually populated the sidewalk. December just had a magical property to it that made her feel like anything could happen at anytime. Cars could turn into sleighs. Snowmen could come to life.

There could be a short man waiting immediately outside her building’s security door.

Lucy couldn’t slow her momentum in time to keep from bumping into his back. The man fell slightly forward, exclaiming, “Hey!” when he turned to look at his assaulter, however, his look of indignation turned to pure joy.

“Lucy!” he said.

Lucy stared at him blankly.

“It’s me!” he held out his arms expectantly. The short, impish man with hair parted extremely to the side looked no more familiar to her than anyone on the street.

“Jack?” he prodded.

Lucy continued staring.

The man’s smile wilted slightly. “Jack? I’m a...an associate of your uncle?”

“Uncle Scott up in Canada? I haven’t visited him in ages,” Lucy blurted. Jack’s face fell.

“Oh I guess...well, silly of me to think you’d remember.” Jack scuffed some snow with the toe of his shoe. “San—Scott said you probably wouldn’t. I just hoped…” he sighed, and then suddenly the elfin grin was back on his face. “So where you off to now?”

“Erm, work.” Lucy’s hand crept secretly to the pepper spray she’d hoped she’d never need.

“Great, I can walk you!” Jack proffered his arm, which Lucy carefully stepped around. He drooped in disappointment but recovered nicely, bounding like a dancer to walk beside her. He started snapping his fingers. “ _ And it’s nutty-coo-coo weather outside _ ,” he burst into impromptu song. He had a large voice for such a little man.

Lucy stared studiously at the sidewalk before her feet as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening as if that would make him go away. She racked her brain but just could not come up with any memory of who this guy was. She had vague if pleasant memories of Uncle Scott, who was a big toy tycoon somewhere up north. She hadn’t visited in ages, but Uncle Scott still thought enough of her to send her an allowance that let her live alone on a meager shop girl's salary. So why hadn’t he sent word that one of his associates was stopping in?

“So, Jack?” The little man shivered slightly at her use of his name.  _ Oookay… _ “What brings you to New York?”

Jack smiled, bouncing his shoulders. “Well, your uncle offered to send me on vacation this year, said we were overstaffed. I said I wanted somewhere warm, and he sent me the warmest place I could think of, which was…” Jack waved a vague hand. 

Lucy barely suppressed a laugh. “New York? In December?”

Jack’s looked put out, like she had purposefully dropped something he threw to her. “ _ No. _ ” 

They crunched on in silence for a moment.

‘So...Jack?” Lucy asked.

“Yup.” Jack smiled.

“I mean, Jack what? Can I get a last name?”

He slowed a bit. “...Frost.”

“Okay.”

He did a double take. “Jack...Frost? That doesn’t ring any sleigh bells?”

“Should it?”

Jack grumbled a bit. 

It was three more blocks to the bookshop where she worked. Lucy was seriously considering flagging a cab at this point, only stymied by the fact that no cabs were going down the road this morning. She regretted deleting Lyft from her phone to make space for Pokemon Go.

Jack didn’t seem that much like a creep anyway...right? Sure, his unblinking smile was beginning to wear on her nerves, and he looked at her with an intensity usually reserved for dogs eyeing a plate of bacon on a high counter, but…

Jack walked into a pole he hadn’t seen because he’d been looking at her. He flinched back, flapping his hand and scolding the inanimate object. “Aw, come on! How does something like that happen?”

Lucy hid a frantic giggle behind her mitten. It was things like that. He didn’t seem to have enough together to to be really threatening. Jack noticed her smothered grin and acted hurt.

“Taking cheer in my pain are we?” He put a hand to his heart. “I guess I can take succor in the fact that I have brought at least one person cheer this season, although my doctor says I should really take succor for my blood pressure.” He giggle-snorted at his own joke, and Lucy gave him a weirded-out smile.

“Sooo, Lucy-goosey, what do you do for work?” he asked, slightly put out at his failed attempt at humor.

“Oh, um, antiques. Collectibles.” Lucy wondered if it was safer to duck in some other shop and then exit out the back, or dart inside her work and have her coworkers  cover for her.

“Collectibles? That would include snow globes, I imagine,” Jack said suavely.

Lucy nearly stopped right there on the sidewalk. “Snow...how’d you guess?”

“I remember you had a yen for them.” Jack looked down. He seemed to be looking not at the sidewalk, but at something projected inside his own head. “Way back when. Loved ‘em so much that—”

“WellthisismyworkI’malittlelatesoIgottagobye!” Lucy blurted out as she darted in the door of the antique shop, leaving the bell to tinkle agitatedly behind her.

Deanna, the only other person on shift, looked at her oddly. “Lucy, you all right?”

Lucy removed a mitten to stab a finger outside. “There’s this creep that followed me all the way from my apartment.” 

“Creep? Where? Is he outside?”

“Yeah, he’s—” Lucy shoved the shop door open. The sidewalk was empty of everything except the usual pedestrians.

...and something that glittered like spun sugar amidst the muddy footprints. Barely daring to breathe, Lucy stepped forward and picked up a rose made out of pure frost. The flower was so delicate it didn’t seem like something that could exist in the first place and, when it melted from the touch of Lucy’s fingertips into nothing, felt like a dream.

“Lucy? Are you coming back in?”

Lucy stared at her wet hand. “...yeah.”

******

Twilight was falling as Lucy swept her hair back under her cap. Flicking a switch, she made the shop dark and locked the door behind her.

“You sure you don’t want an escort?” Deanna tucked a dreadlock behind her ear. “You could just come back to mine, Ethan won’t mind you crashing on the couch.”

Lucy scanned down the sidewalk either way. “I think I'll be okay. If he pops up at my place, I can get the super to whack him with a snow shovel.”

Deanna smiled, not entirely convinced. “Okay, be safe.”

“You too.” Lucy watched her walk all the way down to the corner, where her boyfriend waited with two steaming cups of coffee. Then she turned to walk back to her apartment. 

“Lucy!”

She yelped, thrusting her keys out like a knife. Jack had popped up from seemingly nowhere, same grin on his face.

“I’ve been waiting ages and ages. Did you get my rose?”

Despite her fear, Lucy felt oddly touched. “Y-you left that? It melted.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jack said. He seemed overjoyed at the news. “You have a habit of doing that.”

Lucy waved her hands. “Jack. Mr. Frost. I get that you’re happy to see me, okay? I get that. But I  _ don’t know you _ . I don’t really remember you and to be honest? You’re coming on kind of strong.”

Jack drooped. He puffed out his cheeks like a little boy with a popped balloon. “Wow, I didn’t expect you of all people to give me the cold shoulder. I guess that leaves me no choice.” He reached deep into an inner pocket of his suit jacket.

Of the many thoughts that flashed through Lucy’s head, besides  _ oh my god I'm about to die _ and  _ maybe if I punch him in the head I can get a running start _ , was  _ why does this seem oddly familiar? _

The round lump Jack fetched from his pocket wasn’t a gun or some kind of club, but a snow globe. Inside was a snowman, and the familiar figure of—

“Me!” Lucy gasped. Automatically, her hand reached out to the globe. “I mean, it looks like—”

“It is.” Jack seemed satisfied. “Your Uncle Scott gave this to me before I left. Said I'd probably need it. _ And I guess I do,” _ he admittedly softly.

Jack put the snow globe in her hands. A wall of memories fell on her, a tsunami of memories, a blizzard of endless memory-flakes. That was right! Uncle Scott wasn’t just Uncle Scott, he was Santa! He didn’t live in Canada, he lived in the North Pole! And that meant—

That meant—

Lucy looked at Jack. Her hand went limp, Jack just barely caught the globe before it hit the sidewalk.

“You,” she gasped. 

Jack looked slightly guilty. “Me what?”

“You!” she stabbed her finger at him, backing away. “You’re Jack Frost. You stole the Santa coat— _ you froze my parents!” _

Jack flinched. “Lucy—Lucy wait—”

Lucy turned and ran down the sidewalk. Her hat blew off her head and she nearly turned an ankle vaulting over a fallen garbage can, but she kept going. What stopped her was simply an icy patch of sidewalk. Lucy went straight down, but didn’t get the tailbone-cracking impact she was expecting. She looked down to find a cushion of snow beneath her butt, quilted and everything. She looked up. Jack frost was running towards her, hand extended.

“Slow down,” he huffed, “haven’t—been—jazzercising—lately.” He coughed and held up a finger.

Lucy tried to stand, and fell right back down again. “Stay away from me, you froze my parents!”

“Yeah, and did you forget the part where I un-froze them again?” Jack flung out his arms frustration. “The hug! The melting! Tell me you don’t remember that.”

Of course. Now that Lucy had a second to think, she remembered why Jack looked so different now, standing with his hands on his hips, than in her memory.

“Yes,” she said falteringly, “I melted you. I helped Uncle Scott save Christmas. Why am I only just now remembering this?”

Jack took a ragged breath. “Your uncle saw how hard a time Charlie had trying to live a normal life, so he offered you a chance to live without the burden of knowing. He put your memories in this snow globe, so that when the right time came you could have it all back.”

Lucy squinted. “Memory-erasing snow globes? Isn’t that a little, ah, farfetched?”

“Oh you tell me, magic hugs.” Jack dusted off his suit, which was completely untouched by snow. He offered a hand to Lucy, who hesitated before taking it.

“I wanted to see if you’d remember me without the globe...which you didn’t.” A sulky tone crept into his voice. He looked up at the sky. “I don’t know why...I just thought you’d...I mean, you did de-frost me.” he let out a weak chuckle.

Lucy was still looking at him oddly. “Okay. So why are you here anyway?”

Jack suddenly found the ground very interesting. He rocked back and forth on his heels as he searched for words.

“”Oh, erm, like I said: Santa asked where I wanted to go, and I said I wanted to go somewhere warm, and the warmest place on earth is…” he let the sentence dangle.

Lucy was suddenly, horribly warm. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she mumbled, dropping Jack’s hand. Jack looked crestfallen.

“Well, I'm not begging you to hug me,” he sputtered, “it’s not that you have to, need to, absolutely must, I just thought...you know…” he twiddled his thumbs and forefingers, raising his eyebrows.

Lucy felt herself blush so hard she imagined steam rising from the snowflakes that fell in her hair.

“What, and then you ask me to be one of your elves?”

A shocked and guilty look crossed Jack’s face. “N-no,” he said unconvincingly.

Lucy froze, eyes wide and glassy.

“I need a drink,” she mumbled.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Another Christmas, another timeline, another place. _

Frost Claus (or Santa Jack? He couldn’t quite decide) stood in his upper office in his boss pose. Feet planted wide, hands clasped behind back, hips thrust slightly out. He surveyed his kingdom and found it good. 

Scott said it was about toys? There were tons of people here to get toys, stepping on each other and ripping toys from each other’s arms. He’d even made it worlds more productive by having the plebes fly out to the North Pole. None of the hassle with the sleigh and the reindeer and having to drink all that milk.

Jack’s lip curled. He’d always known he was right about this sort of thing. People didn’t want warmth and experience, they wanted cold, hard cash. What had love and togetherness ever gotten Scott Calvin except indigestion? Jack had everything he wanted: money, power, money admiration, money, love…

He turned to the elf currently emptying his wastebasket. “You love me, right—” he squinted at the elf’s name tag, “—Chet?”

The elf, whose name tag read “Thomas,” shook in his boots. “I-I don’t know sir. What do you think?”

Jack sighed, rolling his eyes. “I think I sign your paychecks, Chet.”

“Then yes.” Thomas shook out an empty bag and quickly placed it in the can.

Jack turned back to his window, smug. That was right. Jack had love. And respect. None of the elves dare backtalk or question him, like they had to Calvin. And if he wanted some kind of mushy thing, like putting on a tree topper, he could just tell them and they’d hop to it.

“How do you feel about—” he said, turning to address an elf that was no longer there. Jack growled to himself. “Note to self, put Chet on reindeer duty.”

Jack wanted to enjoy the view, but a nagging, itching feeling had started up in his chest. He decided to take a little stroll, just to stretch his legs, and then possibly ask one of the elves to help him with the tree. Or a cocoachino. Just because he could.

“Hey there,” he said to an elf selling tickets. She immediately adopted the look of a deer staring down a semi truck.

“Sir?” she squeaked.

“How’re...things?” Jack immediately put a hand out to stop her. “Nevermind, I don’t care. Listen, what’s say you-me go grab some cocoachinos?”

The elf shook. “Umm, I can’t leave this spot, sir.”

“Says who?”

“Says you.” She took out the employee handbook, where a clipart of Jack wagging an ominous finger alleged that breaks were for bones, not workers. Jack frowned at his ink doppelganger.

“As you were,” he sniffed, marching off nonchalantly. Yes sir, no one was less chalant than he, he was so lacking in the chalant department he even broke into a brisk jog, looking through all his elf worker’s faces. Eeeny, meeny, miny—Curtis!

The head elf (Bernard had been sacked for running his mouth off too many times) hawked tickets like a machine, face blank of all emotion. Jack stopped before him, pasting on a grin.

“Hello there,  _ mon fils _ , how goes the...business?”

“I’ve sold three nutcracker suite packages in the last hour, sir,” Curtis rattled off, “and fifteen—”

“A tch-tch-tch,” Jack ticked a finger dismissively. “Do. Not. Care. I was just wondering if you were up to the special privilege of watching  _ moi _ put the tree topper on my office tree.”

Curtis looked at him blankly. “Can’t sir.”

Jack managed to restrain himself from kicking up a flurry of rage-snow. “Oh really? And what’s more important that assisting the best boss you’ve ever had in topping his tree?”

“I have to oversee the fabrication division, fix the chute on the bear line, and arrange for the arrival of Germany’s prime minister.” Jack’s scowl deepened with every sentence. “Also...you had the tree in your office removed.”

Jack blinked. “I did?”

“Yes sir, said it made your hay fever act up.”

Jack crossed his arms, twisting his mouth in displeasure. “Well….yes, good. Go on, do your little elf thing.”

“Yes sir,” Curtis said, and turned away.

Jack scowled at his back. Not even a  _ thank you, boss? Thanks for the unbelievable honor of being your tree-steward? _ Who did he have to freeze to get a little respect around here?

A flash of red, like fire, caught his attention. No, red hotter than any fire could be in the arctic. A red he’d seen in another North Pole, another time. Jack could barely conceal his grin as he sidled over.

There was Neal, Scott’s step- _ thing _ , smiling wanly at a photo op that had cost more than the GNP of Bulgaria. And there, embracing a cardboard Santa, was Lucy. 

Jack stopped just before her father and put his hand out. “Hi there. Jack. Jack Claus. But you can call me—” 

“Santa!” Lucy gasped.

Jack rolled his neck. Ohh, that was good to hear.

“Erm, Neal. Neal Miller.” Neal stuck his hand out.

Jack shook the hand like he was handling raw fish. “Hi Neal. You look warm.” He laughed uproariously at Neal’s look of confusion. “I’m just here to tell you nice folks we’re offering a promotion. At no-to-minimal cost to you, your child can partake in festivities from the other side of the table, so to speak.”

Lucy squinted. “What?”

Jack bent over, putting his hands on his knees. “How would you like to be one of my elves?”

Lucy looked from Jack to the elves robotically hawking merchandise and tickets as far as the eye could see. 

She politely shook her head.

“No thanks,” she said, “that doesn’t look like fun.”

Jack’s smile went so brittle it cracked. “So honest! What a kid.” He patted her head, hand shaking from barely-concealed rage. 

“Hey wait! Are there any other discounts?” Neal called at Jack’s retreating back.

As he stalked away, Jack muttered “double the price of whatever that guy asks for,” to a counter elf.

That night, nursing a cocoachino before the fire, Jack contemplated the frost tree he’d drawn on the wall. The fire in the fireplace made it a constant battle between ice and melt, but who cared about the tree? It was the principle of the thing. He didn’t need anyone to top the tree, just like he didn’t need family or to be chummy with elf workers. He was fine. Jack sipped the cocoa and found it had already gone cold and muddy. It was fine. He was fine.  _ Fine _ .

********

“You see, normally legendaries take time off to visit friends or family,” Jack said, packing a snowball into a perfect globe. They sat on a bus bench, with a comfortable distance between them. Lucy sipped her candy cane mocha and just stared into the distance. “But I guess don’t have any of that. So I thought I'd visit Scott’s family instead.”

“So you have no one? No one at all?” Lucy asked incredulously.

Jack looked off into the distance. “Well, it’s hard. Being Jack Frost isn’t like becoming Santa. I don’t remember a whole lot before I was...like this. Last thing I can remember is being so cold I had to lay down, and then suddenly I was warm all over.” He smiled hazily. “That must have been the job taking over.”

Actually, it sounded like the onset of hypothermia to Lucy, but she bit her tongue. She looked Jack up and down. Exactly who and what had he been before he’d taken up the frost mantle? How old was he, even?

Jack caught her stare and smiled. “I know what you’re thinking.  _ What has he been up to the whole time I was away? _ Well I'll have you know, Lucy, I've been busy. I am the subterritorial supervisor to at least three provinces. I’m filling in wherever I can, more than some of the elves.” He glowed with excitement. “In fact, I'm probably the hardest worker there, and it’s making some of them jealous. Your uncle actually sent me on vacation, he said, to  _ ‘give the elves a break’ _ .”

Lucy nodded, smiling wanly. 

Jack turned his body to face her. The snowball in his hands crinkled into ice so pure it was see-through. “I also looked after people in the real world. Like you, Lucy. You’ve been good, I could see on the list.”

Lucy couldn’t decide what face to make, so it froze in a kind of half-sneeze. Obviously he’d meant that to be a compliment, in his own weird, clumsy way.

Jack ducked his head bashfully. “Just the thought of meeting you again made my heart beat like a distant little jungle drum. When you un-froze me, it was the first nice thing I'd felt, in...gosh, such a long time. You made me realize how miserable I was making other people miserable. I mean, sure, frost is all part of the big circle of...stuff, but there’s no reason I had to be such a jerk about it.” He tossed the ice-ball, catching it in one hand. “I wanted respect, but I never gave anyone any reason to give respect. My elfatrist tells me making amends is just the first cobblestone in my long road to reform.”

Lucy took this news like a thimble took the stream of a firefighter’s hose. Her brain had fragmented at his admittance of ulterior hug-based motives, now she sat taking in every third word. 

Flinchingly, hesitatingly, Jack clasped her mittened hands in his. A strange, not-entirely unpleasant spark shot down her arm. She looked up to find Jack staring intently at her.

“I want to ask—not demand, ask—another hug,” he said, “and I'd like to visit. All the time. And maybe–maybe—”

Lucy rose from the bench, letting her mocha fall to the snow at their feet.

“Ablagarabla,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Can’t—words right now.” She tugged her hand from Jack’s grip. “No. NO. How are you even—no. This is way—I don’t even—what do you think—”

Jack stood, smile slipping from his face. “I really mean it, Lucy. I’ve seen how good you’ve been, and all I could think of was how I could be good too, like you. I wanted to show you how good I could be when I met you again, so we can—”

“No!” Lucy blurted out. The sound reverberated up and down the strangely empty street. She backed away shaking her head. “This is just—it’s crazy! I mean, I'm m-me, and you’re—you’re you—”

Jack was crestfallen. “B-but I've been so good, Lucy, if you could have only seen me! I’ve helped loads of people, I haven’t frozen or tricked anyone!”

“You don’t be good because you’re expecting to get something!” Grammar was failing Lucy, along with gravity. Her wobbly legs threatened to collapse. “You’re supposed to be good because it’s the right thing to do! All you learned from that hug was that you wanted another hug!”

Jack nodded, smiling puzzledly. “Well, yeah. And the way to get more hugs is to be good. Am I wrong?”

Lucy stared at him. 

He pouted. “Look, I'm not great at this whole ‘nice’ thing, you can see that.” He took a step forward. Lucy retreated a step. “But with help, I could totally nail this sucker. I mean, look at this!”

He opened his suit jacket, revealing a tacky Christmas sweater that rivaled some of her dad’s wardrobe in clashing colors.

Lucy put a hand over her eyes.

“Right? It doesn’t feel great to wear something so tacky, but it’s part of being nice. Wearing tacky clothes and singing corny songs and smiling like you have syrup for blood. I’ve done all that!” Jack dropped his lapels. “I’m putting all the footwork in, Lucy, I just need someone to believe in me!”

Lucy guffawed into her hands. “Jack,” she said, sliding her mittens down to regard him, “I don’t believe in you. I can’t. I can’t believe you missed the mark so hard.”

Jack let his gaze drop slowly to the ground. He let out a long-suffering sigh.

“All right,” he said, “can’t say I didn’t try.”

He snapped his fingers. Ice crusted over him in a wave, studding his suit with ice crystals and turning his hair into a horribly familiar white spike nest.

All the color drained from Lucy’s face.

Jack Frost smirked at her. “You don’t like me being good? Fine. I won’t be. So this is on you.” he turned and started walking off.

“Wait,” Lucy croaked, “what are you doing?”

Jack glanced back at her. “I’m going to a deli, get myself a little pastrami on rye, maybe some provolone and mustard—  _ I’m going to freeze the city, what do you think I'm doing?” _

“You can’t!” Lucy jogged up to him. “All the work you put in to be nice!”

Jack tossed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I told you, Lucy-goosey, naughty listers have more fun.” He pointed a finger, making an ice-barrette to hold her hair back.

“Wait,” She called. Jack strode away. “Wait.”  Lucy trotted after. “Wait.  _ Wait. Waitwaitwait don’t!” _

Jack froze a wall up the sides of the apartment buildings. What little people were out on the sidewalk turned and gasped at the sudden freeze, completely missing the strange little man running by them. He skipped merrily ahead, moving surprisingly fast for a man who admitted to never exercising. Hydrants burst and then froze into ice fountains. The sidewalk turned into crisp white ice. Lucy ran on behind him, losing her hat again. She didn’t bother going back for it this time.

Jack reached a statue and jumped to stand on its pedestal, adopting a pose mocking it. 

“Well, Lucy? What do you think of my winter wonderland?”

Lucy was redfaced, tears streaming from her eyes. “You can’t freeze the city, I—I won’t let you!”

Jack acted affronted, put a hand on his chest. “My goodness, is this objection from the peanut gallery? Where was all this passion when I was pouring my heart out to you a minute ago?”

Lucy balled her hands into fists and stared him down. “Change. It. back.”

Jack smirked at her. “And if I don’t?”

Lucy pounced.

Jack didn’t even flinch, just stood there and smirked away as Lucy wrapped him in a hug like a sauna. He laughed as a caul of ice cracked and fell away from his face. Once again he was the strange, gentle man of that morning. But he didn’t stop there. He just kept running down like he himself was made of ice melting away.

He laughed. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he said as his face slid into nothingness.

Lucy was left staring at the now-empty circle of her arms.

“Jack?”

There was nothing. The wall of ice burst into a flurry of snowflakes as silent as a feather drop. She looked up and down the street.

“Jack?” she blinked. New tears were forming, not out of anger. “Jack? P-please, I didn’t mean to...I'm sorry.”

The clap startled her. She looked down at her feet, where Jack was laying whole and healthy and applauding her.

“I said this was the warmest spot on earth, and I was right,” he said.

Lucy teetered for a moment. Then she kicked him in the shoulder.

“You—jerk!” she said, breaking into body-wracking sobs. “Dummy! Idiot! Jerk!” 

Jack rose from the snow, leaving a perfect snow angel in his wake. “Aw, Luce, don’t be too mad, okay? I didn’t mean it.”

He wrapped her in a hug, which felt admittedly nice. She let out a few half-hearted punches to the ribs, then just let herself fall forward and be held. She wiped her nose on his shoulder.

“Why isn’t this doing anything to you?” she asked.

“Because I'm hugging you, silly. If your hugs are good for melting things, it stands to reason my hugs are good for cooling things down.”

Lucy let out a startled laugh. She raised her head so that they were face-to-face. Jack was smiling at her, but his eyes were sad.

“I’m sorry Lucy,” he said, “you’re just about the bestest person I know, it wasn’t very nice to trick you like that.”

Lucy snorted liquidly. Jack immediately flicked out a handkerchief and offered it to her. As Lucy dabbed at her eyes and nose, he stepped back and looked at her.

“I’m not great with people, I'll admit,” he said, “but I know when someone’s had enough of the cold. We need to get you somewhere warm. I’m told I make a mean cocoachino.”

Lucy honked her nose a bit into the handerchief. “You’d better. You owe me big time after a stunt like this.”

Jack held his hands up. “I surrender—I'm your humble slave for the rest of the visit.”

He settled an arm around her shoulders as they crunched down the sidewalk, accompanied only by the occasional falling snowflake. 


End file.
